Thursday, August 25, 2005

The ULTIMATE diet

With America's obesity rate reaching nearly 25 Percent, it is time for something new.

I spoke with a friend of mine who managed to lose 50 pounds since January of this year. Obviously he knows something about weight loss, so I asked him to share his secret. His advice is incredibly simple. Anyone can do this, and it is absolutely free:

Go to FitDay.com. This is a site that lets you track everything you eat. Set up an account and then track EVERYTHING you eat. It takes about 20 minutes to learn your way around the site, and from there it is easy. You can also track your daily exercise (walks, bicycle rides, lawn mowing, whatever).

It will ask you what sort of lifestyle you have when you set up your account, and he recommends "sedentary".

His contention is that if you cannot get yourself disciplined enough to track what you are eating, then you also won't be disciplined enough to control your eating. Therefore you will not succeed at losing weight, so you can just give up and stop worrying about it. Accept your obesity and be happy about it.

OK, that's harsh. But it is true. So go sign up on FitDay.com and get yourself together enough to track what you eat every day. Force yourself to do it until it becomes a habit.

His second contention is that, as soon as you start tracking what you eat, you will be appalled at how much you are eating. You will be so appalled that you will begin to eat less. Simply by making yourself aware of how much you eat, you will act on that awareness and start cutting back.

He also contends that you will know that if you eat something, you have to write it down in FitDay, and that acts as a deterrent.

Decide what you want your weight to be. Let's say you weigh 200 pounds and you want to weigh 170. Multiply 170 by 12. That's 2,040. That's the maximum number of calories you should eat each day. His contention is that you won't be able to eat more than that once you get down to your target weight, so you might as well get used to it now. If you can't get used to it, then you won't be able to keep the weight off, so you can just give up and stop worrying about it. Accept your obesity and be happy about it.

That's it! It's an easy, straightforward way to lose weight. It all hinges on self-discipline, and if you can just get into the habit of going to FitDay or someplace like it every day, the discipline is a lot easier.

Don't just cut back on your daily calories though; if you eat 3000 a day and decide you will only eat 2000 a day once you lose the weight, the worst thing that you can do is cut back to 2000 all at once. If you deprive your body of calories then it will slow down your metabolism and begin storing fat for the lean times you are telling it are coming, and you won't be able to lose weight and the weight you do lose will be muscle mass instead of fat. A better solution is to work with a personal trainer to start eating healthier foods that will increase your metabolism coupled with a good exercise program.

I weigh in the low 140s and consume about 3000-3500 calories a day, on average.

This seems like an open festering breeding ground for anorexia. I havent used fitDay.com, however I have kept track of my food intake over the past year. Rarely am I "appalled" at what I am eating, and rarely do I feel I am consuming too much, which proves that simply not eating so much is not the solution for everyone. I might understand if you are a person who has never paid attention to your diet and consume anything you want to at anytime that this may be helpful...however what are people to do once they have implimented this idea and found it to fail?

I skim a lot of blogs, and so far yours is in the Top 3 of my list of favorites. I'm going to dive in and try my hand at it, so wish me luck.

It'll be in a totally different area than yours (mine is about weight loss drug) I know, it sounds strange, but it's like anything, once you learn more about it, it's pretty cool. It's mostly about weight loss drug related articles and subjects.